Epinician Ode 1 (excerpt)

Listen: you have your healthand enough to live on? What else can you want?You are one of the lucky fewand ought to enjoy it.Life, if you aren't sick or destitute,is good, but we waste our timein this golden sunshine lookingalways to someone else and thinking,"he must be happy".It's not so.The rich are never content.They want as fervently as we do,more, more.It's how men are made.They want what they don't have,whatever is hard to attain,and they spend their strengthreaching out, mostly for baubles and toys,wealth and power. But these are trivial things,and the bone yards are full of utter non-entitieswho had more than their share.Virtue is different, difficult, real:those who have earned that have it forever,in life and after, forever.True distinction, fame, glory, that never dies.